Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1890 — HOW WE ARE TAXED. [ARTICLE]

HOW WE ARE TAXED.

If this country is to strike at the commerce of the world such a blow as is now threatened, says the New York World in a recent editorial, it is not snrprising if the commercial nations endeavor to bring us to terms by a warfare upon our most vulnerable interests. There is no doubt as to what will be the point of attack. The majority of I peopie of this country are vitally interi ested in foreign commerce. The farmers would starve were it not for their European market. Of onr $730,000,000 of exports in 1889 $503,000,000 were agricultural products. About 21 per cent, of onr wheat goes abroad, leu years ago more than 40 per cent, of the crop was exported. Two-thrdsof onr cotton supplies foreign mills. Provisions, corn, floor, animals and other farm outputs make up the balance of the merchandise in which our largest foreign trade is done. The concerted action of the European powers will be against the farmer. Discriminating and even prohibitory taxes against American products are already thieatened. That it is possible for Europe to stimulate the production of rival states was shown during the war by the grekt increase in the cotton-grow-ing industry of Esypt, and it has been demonstrated still more recently by the important advance made in Hungary, Rnssia, and the Argentine Republic in wheat growing. As an exporter of wheat the United States is on the decline, and it is not holding its own in the foreign corn trade. With the exception of 1877, our exports of wheat in 1889 were smaller than in any year since 1873. In view of this it will be readily seen that if Europe Bhall discriminate agunst our farmers in retaliation for our tariff, the result must be dire distress. This, and not the proposed duty on eggs, is the feature of the McKinley bill which demands the attention of our farmers. There is no question but that the McKinley tariff would make every civilized family in the United States pay a good deal more for carpets, and that the great ranchmen, who choose to herd great droves of half-wild sheep on government lands rather than raise decent animals on their own land, would get more for their wool. That is just what the McKinley inorease of the wool tariff is for. But how will it help the ordinary American sheep farmer? The average price of carpet wools imported in 1889 was 11 cents per pound. The duty, therefore, under the McKinley bill would be about 3$ cents, which, with 2 cents added for transport, etc., would make the wool cost say 16i cents on the average, laid down in Philadelpnia, where it is manufactured. This practically means an equivalent of from 11 to 13 cents at the railroad stations nearest the few American producers of carpet wool. No farmer grows any wool which would be in the slightest protected by his being assured any such price, even if the tariff did it. And no American farmer proposes to raise any such wool at all, tnough a few ranchmen may. The excuse these latter have for asking a higher duty i» their claim that the better grades of carpet , wools are sometimes used as substitutes for the coarser grades of clothing wools, and hence hurt the market for the latter. This claim—alwayß absurd to any one who knows anything about the carpet and wool trade—has at last been given a quietus by the great protectionist expert and dealer, George Willi im Bond, of Boston, the oldest and for a long time past the leading expert in the American wool trade, who, in his annual wool circular dated February, 1889, notes what every farmer knows, if he will stop to think—“that coarse wools here have held their prices better than line wools of late years."

As to the effect of high tariffs on 'wool prices, the figures leave no doubt. High titriffs (we have had them since 18(57) mean low prices for tha better grades of our wools, lor all the grades that a farmer, as distinguished from a ranchman, cares to raise. Mr. Bond’s circular, just referred to, is a most conclusive document. Explaining, as he does, how the taking off all tariffs on most wools in 1857 at once caused somewhat of a raise in the price of foreign wools, and a much greater increase in the price of domestic wools, he closes: “An experience of high duty lor over twenty-five years has failed to.increase the value of wool, home-grown. So different is the cbaiacter and quality of wool grown in different countries, and even in different parts of the same country, that if the woo s were free the probable result would only be to equalize values the world over, and it would be found that other countries would want our wool as much as we should want tbeirsv” This is corroborated by the following facts: The price of wool in this country has been but little (and often no) higher than it has been abroad, grade for grade. Hardly a year has passed that buyers from the woolen mills of Scotland, England, Germany and Canada have not invaded our market, buying here because they could buy cheaper than anywhere else in the world. Here are our exportations for the past few years:

Total Total exYear. pounds, port value. 1883 04.474 $22,114 1884 ...., 10,393 3,073 1885 88.000 16,739 1880 2.139,080 476,274 1887 257,940 78,002 1883... 22,104 5,272 1889 141,570 23,065 Where was this wool snipped to? Who bousht it? Here is the report of the Bureau of Statistics: Canada, 2,388,069 pounds; England, 114,657 pounds; Scotland, 29,334 pounds; Germany, 42,258 pounds; Mexico, 76,602 pounds. The farmers of the United States have never once inquired the price Of wool abroad. They have shipped their wool to Liverpool and Glasgow, for sale there at foreign market prices, in competition with the English and Scotch sheep farmers whom they undersold—after paying freight.